Sons kill father in family dispute

Shock and grief gripped Kameji village in Rongo, Migori County, after a man was allegedly killed by his two sons over a family dispute.

Joseph Ogutu, 27 and his 12-year-old brother are said to have hacked their father to death on Saturday night when they realised poison they had administered on him was slow in killing him.

Ogutu, the eldest son in the family of five sons who was suspected of orchestrating the killing, said the father had caused the family a lot of trouble and they wanted him dead.

“He has always mistreated my younger siblings and was very disrespectful to me and my wife,” said Ogutu, a father of three.

Close family members said the two had engaged their father in fights the entire day on Friday, prior to the night when they decided to end his life.

Ogutu’s cousin, Kennedy Ochieng, said one of the sons suspected to have killed the old man woke up early on Saturday and went around the village telling people his father had been murdered. “The young man came to my house and reported that he had found his father lying unconscious in his house and it seemed like somebody had killed him,” reported Ochieng.

After the villagers gathered in the home, they started raising suspicion on the son who initially denied any link to the murder but was later said to have accepted to be behind it.

A local administrator who later handed him to the police saved him from a surging crowd that wanted to lynch him. Neighbours said the man killed his father in his house, which he shared with four of his young children.

Police said the two brothers confessed to killing their father by hacking him using a knife, adding that they also confessed to having used poison first which failed to work.

Rongo police boss Catherine Irungu said the body bore stab wounds that may have been inflicted using a sharp object.

Irungu confirmed the eldest son had already been arrested and was being interrogated while his wife was assisting in similar investigations.